Flour on the Floor: Popovers

Editor's Note: This week's blog post was intended to run last week, but held due to storm coverage. Good cooking tips never expire!

Choosing a recipe was difficult this week.  I’ve tethered myself to the idea of completing Baking Illustrated one chapter at a time, thus learning all there is to know about “Quick Breads, Muffins, Biscuits, and Scones” before moving on to “Yeast Breads and Rolls.”  This week, in honor of Father’s Day, I decide to bake something for my husband.  But when I look at the list of what’s left to cook in the chapter, I see a lot of things that “Dad” isn’t going be too jazzed about.  Oh happy day, here’s your date nut bread.  I choose to bake popovers then craft a meal around them.  Baking and cooking, on the same day, oh my!

I envision this meal as one worth coming home for.  In our house, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are about choice--almost always, my husband and I choose to use our respective holidays for a break from caring for the kids who made us parents.  That means, this particular Sunday, I get up with the kids.  I feed them breakfast.  I play with them.  Hmm, this is starting to sound just like every other day.  My husband’s day will end with us at a table, hopefully enjoying popovers.

We know one other family that “celebrates” the same way, with the dad spending the day on his own.  This particular mom and I frequently have variations on the same conversation: what is a family supposed to look like?  We are both children of divorce and find ourselves curious about how other families fill a Saturday or what dinner conversations sound like in the house across the street.  Are we engaging our kids too much or too little?  We wonder if we are doing it right, even as we admit that there is no “right.”  We wonder if it’s normal to spend these holidays, that society has designated for family togetherness, separated.

A visual survey of the playground that afternoon tells me that our particular arrangement is not the norm.  Fathers push kids on swings, wait at the bottom of slides, and give thumbs up for good jumps.  The dads are a lot more attentive at the park than the moms I see there on weekdays.  Moms view the park as an escape, a break. Whereas Dads seem to view it as—an activity!  On this day, I am the only mother present.  I look lax.  The enthusiasm of the fathers shames me from my bench and the next thing you know I am pretending to be my daughter’s “baby” while she pushes me on the swing.

When we get back from the park, a Dad who lives around the corner drops by with his two girls; his wife is sick and he’s in charge.  It’s not long before he and my husband are in the basement side-by-side playing pinball and the assortment of four kids is tied into aprons awaiting my popover instructions.  

I have never made popovers; in fact, I’m not even sure I’ve had popovers.  In the picture, they look like over-sized dinner rolls--more bread-like than cake-like.  Without yeast or chemical leaveners (baking soda or powder) in the recipe, I am mystified as to how they can possibly rise to their puffy-topped glory.  I’ve done my part though: I bought a Popover Pan.  Williams Sonoma is $20 richer and I have a new behemoth of a pan for a recipe I’m not even sure of yet.   I compare the recipe on the back of the popover pan packaging and the one in the book.  Though the ingredients are the same, the amounts of each are different.  I stick with Baking Illustrated.

There are two stools and four children in the kitchen.  We quickly develop some system of take your turn mixing or adding or stirring then step down to allow the next child up.  Pretty soon, we are as well choreographed as “So Long, Farewell” in The Sound of Music.  Our friend’s eldest daughter is a pro, leveling the measuring cup with a steady finger.  When I compliment her on this, our happy rhythm is disrupted by my daughter, hand on hip, sassing, “I am really good at that too!”  I placate; they are all good at leveling.  Once mixed, the batter must sit for 30 minutes.  The kids go exploring barefoot outside still clad in their aprons.

The last step is to add the batter to the already oven-heated popover pan as quickly as possible.  The directions say, “Distribute the batter evenly among the 6 cups.”  Sounds simple.  It’s not.  I don’t know whether to fill each cup by one-quarter or half or three-quarters.  I start with a light hand then add more on the next cups and run out at the end.  This leaves me with finished popovers that, in the pan, look like a roller-coaster—starting low then rising and sinking down again.  They take a long time to bake—20 minutes at high heat to brown the outside then another 18  at low heat to cook the insides—and our extra helpers have long since gone home with their Dad when the popovers come out of the oven.  Later, I deliver them one of the “good” (not squat) ones to taste and their mom exclaims, “Just like Neiman Marcus!”

At home, I have miscalculated the dinner + popover equation.  Our meal is ready a solid 20 minutes before the bread so we end up having popovers for dessert.  I cut into one and find it almost hollow--like a hot air balloon, it is dense at the bottom and empty at the top.  The crust is just right and we polish them all off.  My husband proclaims that this was his best Father’s Day ever and the kids beam.         

It strikes me that baking is a lot like raising kids.  You don’t know until it’s done how it will turn out.  You can turn on the light in the oven and take a peek but it’s an imperfect, clouded view.  We see our children and how they are at home, but out in the world, who knows?  There are lots of ways to parent—lots of recipes to choose from—but they all have the same basic ingredients.  In the end, will they rise or fall flat?  We don’t know but we measure, mix, and anticipate.  And some days, a kitchen rich with the smell of eggy bread is all we need.  As is the smile our kids get when they bite into a warm piece slathered with butter and jam.